Well, dear readers, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but October is almost half done. How can that be? This month if flying by, like a gazelle relating the tale of The Randy Vicar and the Ball Peen Hammer. All I know is it seems like yesterday that it was January, that’s all I know. As I write these here notes, I just finished listening once again to Le Cortex de la Planete X. It’s already a very guilty pleasure and something completely unique in all my experience – my work in a foreign language, namely French via Montreal, Canada. It’s a trip and a half hearing my songs in French, especially this score, which translates really well. Such Brain songs as Sur la Terre, Bonne et Vilaine, Le Futur est pour Bientot, Le Plan, Tu Vas Voir ca va Changer a l’avenir, and the act one closer, La! In act two we have the toe-tapper La Tete a Claque, Je Veux un Terrien, Qui Aurait Cru, La Chanson du Cortex, and Question d’Hommes. The performers are delightful and I was especially impressed with the Yoni and Donna singers. Their band is cookin’ and I’ve already written to the producer asking if they have a video, which I’d dearly love to see. The producer, it turns out, saw the show at NYMF and loved it. In any case, a job well done. The CD is missing a few things – the first version of The Plan (only the reprise is included), the opening of act two, and Independence Day – I’ve asked if they recorded those and if they did I’ve asked them to send them to me as mp3s just so I have them.
Yesterday was a perfectly perplexing day. I got up at nine for no reason whatsoever, stayed in bed for no reason whatsoever, finally got up around eleven, did stuff on the computer, then went out and put gas in the motor car – and can we say just how nauseating the gas prices are – $4.89 a gallon. I know someone has finally demanded an inquiry into this and usually when that happens rather than face the inquiry, gas prices suddenly start to drop and hopefully that will be the case soon. What would make that happen faster is if people would just stop driving frivolously and just fill up when they absolutely have to – that’s happened a few times and it’s amazing just how fast the prices drop. Of course, they never drop to low enough levels, which is why these companies keep upping the ante so that when they push as hard as they can and get called on it, they drop but drop to a higher level. It’s criminal and it should stop but as long as oil is running this country, which it is, there is really no hope for anything changing, and I don’t just mean oil.
After that, I picked up no packages and an important envelope. What was in the important envelope irritated me on several levels and after doing some banking I wrote a really strong e-mail about it and got back an immediate apology and promise it would never happen again. Then I decided to satisfy my craving for a Tom’s bacon cheeseburger, so I went to Tom’s, which is the best place to go to satisfy a craving for a Tom’s bacon cheeseburger. It was great. I had some onion rings with it, but only ate about half of them. Then I came home and listened to the mixes we did on Friday night. Mostly they sounded great, but I’ve already had the engineer bring up the level of the strings on one track and my memory, which most know is infallible, suddenly reminded me that one track was supposed to have a Hammond organ sound – I specifically asked Lanny to do that in the session, so I know it was done. It turns out that the engineer had it in but mixed so low you can’t even hear it. I asked him to make it a featured player and while he’s at it to make the piano much more of a star – right now, it sounds like an eighth-billed co-star. So, once those minor things are done, off it will go to mastering. Then I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled You Only Live Twice. Naturally I saw the film on its opening day, but it was not to my liking even back then. I hadn’t loved Thunderball either, but that one at least had its moments. By You Only Live Twice the writing was on the wall – everything had to be bigger, more opulent, more quips, more action, and that’s not what makes the first three films click. In You Only Live Twice the pace is glacial. There’s nice Japanese scenery, a really good score by John Barry, but Connery looks so bored, his toupee has gotten really bad (it was first bad in Thunderball), and he’s heavier than in the other films. Donald Pleasance is just weird as Blofeld (the first time we actually see him) – I love that we don’t see him in the other films and I love the voice they used (actor Eric Pohlmann) – in fact, when I recently watched From Russia and Thunderball I knew immediately it was Mr. Pohlmann – his voice is very distinctive and I’ve seen him in a LOT of movies over the last few years. The transfer of You Only Live Twice is totally peculiar – it’s very sharp, with good contrast, and three or four shots have really good color, while the rest of the transfer is too brown and dull. The last time I saw You Only Live Twice was back in the late 1970s when I ran my 35mm IB Tech print – the color was unbelievable. The pity of it is that this would have been so easy to fix and would have taken no time at all. If they could get it right for three or four shots, they could get it right for the entirety of the film. Lazy and stupid. In fact, so far this set is a bit of a fail – these transfers are all six or seven years old and even though a handful of them were scanned at 4K the work done on them, which was then fashionable, is just not up to snuff today. For a 50 year anniversary set, they needed to do fresh transfers of all the films, it’s that simple.
After that, I watched the first thirty minutes of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film, The Lodger, which he considers the first real Hitchcock film (he’d made a couple before it). It’s not a great film by any means, but you can see Hitchcock starting to figure out who he is and what makes him tick as a director. The star of the film is Ivor Novello, who is truly handsome and charismatic. So far the transfer (tinted) is very good – it’s the best I’ve ever seen the film look, and it comes with a new, symphonic score that at times is a bit overbearing but is oddly endearing, including a vocal for one scene that’s decidedly anachronistic, but somehow is charming at the same time.
After that, I made two eggs and a small piece of ham for my evening whatever. Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I really need a good night’s beauty sleep.
Today is a ME day – not doing any work so don’t even ask me to. There is a screening of Argo at the DGA at four and I may just go. I’m having dinner out at eight and those are the only things that are happening.
Tomorrow, lots to do, bills to pay, a new release to prep, and a show to see. This week is filled with meetings and meals and errands and whatnot and then late in the week I’ll be putting together a little gathering or two for dear reader ChasSmith. Maybe we’ll take him on the Kritzer tour if he feels like it. Haven’t done one of those in a ‘coon’s age. By the way, new radio show up here at haineshisway.com. Enjoy it – it may be the last we do here on the site. I think we’re moving the show to its own site so that it actually can load properly and not in sections and where all computers will be able to handle the output properly. We’ll link to it from here and from Kritzerland. We’re about to start our makeover for haineshisway.com – it will probably take until the end of the year, but when it’s done we’ll be hosted by a new web host, we’ll be up to date in our look and feel and we will finally be able to get back to doing interviews, and we’ll have video and audio capability, too. We will be happening. We’re going very slowly, though, because we want to protect all the archives of notes and all the discussion board posts. And the joy of switching hosts is that I will save about $1,000 a year because our current host is unbelievably expensive because I’ve got the big plan so that we don’t run out of space. The new host gives us UNLIMITED space for a grand less. Kind of a no-brainer.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, relax, finish The Lodger and maybe move on to Diamonds Are Forever, maybe see Argo, and then have a nice dinner out. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, and let’s have them Sur la Terre.